Transcript

I wanna talk about my experience of moving out and living on my own. Moving out to live on your own is not very common in Hong Kong. Many people still choose to live with their parents even though they have a decent job and they’re already at their thirties. Many of them would stay with their parents until they get married. There are several reasons behind – firstly, Hong Kong’s rent is expensive, many people would rather save up more money to purchase an apartment instead of renting one. Secondly, the Chinese traditional value of family is that the parents are the ones who brought you up. When you become an adult, you should also take good care of your parents and you should spend more time to be with them. And of course there are people who are still dependent on their parents for food, clothing, household chores, etc.

When I tell people about the idea of moving out, many people’s reaction is like, “what do your parents say?” because they assume the parents would not like their children to leave them. Well I don’t know if my parents like it but I can tell you my parents support and respect my decision. They think it is good for me to try and live on my own and then I would know it is the best to stay with my family.

The most important reason for independent living is to save the travelling time to work. It used to take me one hour fifteen minutes to travel to work from my previous living place. From my new apartment, it just takes me thirty minutes so I saved forty-five minutes’ travelling time. I don’t have to get up so early and I save two-third of my travelling cost. It does not only save my time to travel for work but also from most of the places in Hong Kong. In addition, I gain my personal space and freedom by independent living. I make my own decision all the time, I do not have to say whether I would go home for dinner, I can invite my friends to come up and stay late.

Of course there are some trade-offs in living on your own. If you want to rent an apartment, there are lots of preparatory works (work) to do. You have to keep visiting the apartments to search for your ideal one. You have to negotiate with the landlord about the price, furniture inclusion, who is responsible for the maintenance of the furniture and equipments (equipment). My experience was that after we moved into the apartment, it was not until the kitchen cupboard was soaked with water that we found out there was water leakage in the kitchen sink.

Money is the main issue in living on your own. You have to be responsible for all the expenses, for example, the rent, electricity, gas, water, telephone, internet bills, etc. Therefore you’ve got to be well prepared and save up for your bills. Although I find my transportation time much shorter, the saved time is spent on other things, such as cooking and some other household chores. I think preparing and cooking the food do occupy a significant portion of my time, therefore I always try to make simple meals. On the other hand, I have to regularly tidy up my apartment and wash my clothes, so it doesn’t really save much of my time after all.

Now everything is settled down, I’m getting used to my new life and I am enjoying it. I feel that moving out makes it easier for me to strike a balance between my work, my social life, my study and my family. It may be troublesome but it may worth.

Comments

Hello all,
I think that this subject depend the situation of every body.
For me, i prefer to leave Alone as it will be great to take your own responsability and be free in your life style, simple example cook the food that you want to eat.
In my culture it's praticly impossible specially for single women to leave alone except if you are in another city for study or work purposes.
The money is also a part as sometimes you can't financially handle the cost of leaving alone and sometimes also your parents need your financial help.
So generally I see that the main reason of the difference between people in this point is the economical and family values points.
Kind Regards

Hi Everyone,
I would prefer to live with family instead of living alone.
All the time spending out side for office or on work places we are tired mainly mentally fatigue. As we grown up in a family and naturally we are incomplete individually. If we are living alone we will also thank about family. So, we can not get relax.This could be possible only when we live together. We can share every day whatever we see outside and discuss

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I am really interested in "Living on my own".
I have left my parents since I just was a 11 year-old girl.
During Secondary and High school, I have left my parents and stayed at the dormitory for studying.
Then, I had to go to the capital where has my dream university. I have studied there for 4 years. After graduation, I keep going to work and stay away from my parents. I go back to visit them every month. It takes about 3.5 or 4 hours by coach to get home.
Sometimes, I just wanna go home and never come back to the busy city I am staying. I have to work for living, take care everything, pay for all: rent, internet, electric bills, food....
I admire them who have chance to live with your parents.
However, thanks to living independent, I realize that I could do and solve everything on my own. I seem to be more mature and respect my parent's sacrifices.
Thanks for supporting me. You're my precious. :*

I think that nowadays young people tend to remain more time with their parents as it used to be in the past, mainly due to economic and educational reasons. People are spending more time on their education, more and more of them study to obtain a degree at the university in order to look for a better job. Generally students are supported economically by their parents if they are not living with them, but a lot of university students still live with parents during their careers. Another reason why people tend to live with their parents is becouse getting a steady job has become difficult especially in southern europe (such as in Italy,Spain or Greece). Living indipendently is unaffordable for many young workers becouse the cost of life is high copared to their salaries and in order to rent a house you have to guarantee a regular salary, which is not easy to earn if you consider that today the most common job contract is the fixed term one.

I think that move out or not is mostly a metter of money rather then of culture or tradition. I am Italian and in my country is important to stay with and to support parents, but living on your own still remains a personal choice. Personally I prefer to live on my own becouse i can have my space and managing my time indipendently. I like to visit my parents too so I am back home almost everytime I have the chance to do so.

I think living with parents until you get married is quite good causes when they are old in somedays they really need someone to share anything with even that is happiness or else. I have lived far from my house in reason of studying but i always want to come back home whenever i have time.

As for me, I do prefer living on my own. I think it make me mature, independent and strong. I could stand on my own getting more confident and avoid some misunderstanding conditions with my patents due to generation gap.

Hello
Living on my own or parents is very difficult to decide, as one option is better than the other and the other is even better than the one. I always want to live on my own,as I know it would be a difficult task to suddenly get adjusted to the new environment but not impossible. As a parent, they would never want their son or daughter to stay away from home , as again this differs from parent to parent. Yes , if living on my own is the option, then money is the main factor to be considered. The good side of living on your own is you are getting trained to live in a completely different world with only difficulties and nothing will come as easy we think.
Thank you
Please correct me if I am wrong anywhere .